Keeping with the Times

[ScrappyPaperDoodler]

I only started writing/publishing a year ago, but I’ve been a longtime reader. All that reading has definitely influenced and since many of those stories were 'older', my work harkens back to a time when sexuality was very 'different.' Nowadays, it seems things have never been so open, yet there’s a new prudishness that contradicts it.

We’ve seen the advent of hyper-sexual social media, changes in how pornography is accessed and produced, massive changes in social relations, masculinity, femininity, gender, sexuality…

I struggle to harness many of these shifts in my writing. Still, I get the feeling that my readers (or at least those I interact with) are younger than I expected. I’d say a large portion are in their 20s and I often wonder what they like and how they perceive sex, considering their generation.

Many here have been writing for a long time and I wonder what you’ve noticed changing as the years pass. How do you try to keep up if you try at all?

 

[PoisonPen33]

Confirming consent in some capacity (even if informal and flirty) and a mention of hygiene. For some reason, those are the two things that seem to stretch across all my work.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Many here have been writing for a long time and I wonder what you’ve noticed changing as the years pass. How do you try to keep up if you try at all?

I've been writing here since 2014, but since I only write for myself, writing what interests me, I don't try to "keep up". The one thing I will say is, comments are fewer, which is a shame.

 

[AlinaX]

When I started reading Literotica, futanari were a rare curiosity, but these days they're a mainstay of erotic fiction. Futanari anime is also getting increasingly realistic.

I seem to remember there being a lot more 'shemale' / 'dickgirl' stuff in the past, and these days trans and non-binary characters are quite common. Just yesterday I read a story about Zero, non-binary with pronouns they/them, explicitly intersex.

If diversity of sex and gender is something you're uncertain writing about, then just avoid it. 90% of Literotica is still straight men and bisexual women.

 

[ScrappyPaperDoodler]

When I started reading Literotica, futanari were a rare curiosity, but these days they're a mainstay of erotic fiction. Futanari anime is also getting increasingly realistic.

I seem to remember there being a lot more 'shemale' / 'dickgirl' stuff in the past, and these days trans and non-binary characters are quite common. Just yesterday I read a story about Zero, non-binary with pronouns they/them, explicitly intersex.

If diversity of sex and gender is something you're uncertain writing about, then just avoid it. 90% of Literotica is still straight men and bisexual women.

I’m wondering, have these shifts been mainly in terms of the language used? Basically, was the language used in the past so highly fetishised that it was a 'niche'. and now that it’s more broadly accepted/normalised (in the language we use) it’s no longer niche but part of the 'mainstream'.

I’ve found male bisexuality is definitely gaining traction and while I’d love to explore it in fiction, I’d probably have to do it with an alt-account to avoid alienating existing readers. At the very least, I think men have become more accepting of the possibility that they can find another man attractive or receive anal sex from a female partner while 'remaining' heterosexual.

There was definitely more stigma than there is now.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Sex is sex. It's either between two people or a group of people. It's about the opposite sex or the same sex. I don't get into genders per se.

What I get into is two people getting together to feel good.

What I have noticed over the years is all the grumpy old men who hate women. You would have to write or read loving wives stories. In the beginning comments were praising the writer no matter how bad the writing was. Now, if you have a husband who enjoys his wife 'cheating' on him, comment are how he's a cuckold wimp husband.

Other than that, everything is about the same as far as I can see. Readers either like what you write or they don't and they aren't ashamed to tell you all about it.

 

[ScrappyPaperDoodler]

On people getting together and feeling good… I recently read about a survey that found current 20-somethings are having less sex than prior generations. Intimate non-romantic relationships have become far more common and accepted. This is definitely something I’ve enjoyed writing about (though everyone ends up having sex by the end) and I’d venture to say it’s a 'recent trend'.

 

[SimonDoom]

I've been reading stories here for nearly 20 years and writing since 2016. I'm middle-aged.

I can't recall ever receiving comments or feedback suggesting I'm not "keeping up" in my stories, and I haven't felt much if any concern about it.

I'm aware that even in the last 20 years there have been significant changes in the sexual landscape, especially concerning LGBTQ issues, but also regarding issues of consent. I also see a heightened level of Puritanism and disapproval that was absent previously. My perception is that the online erotica world was in someways more freewheeling 20 years ago, and it's become somewhat stricter, with some people settling into camps and be more vocal in disapproving of what others are reading. The attitude toward underage content is more negative than it used to be.

For the most part, though, I just write what I want to write, and readers seem OK to go along with that.

One way that it is difficult to "keep up" is popular culture and the speaking habits of young people. As I get older I'm increasingly aware that 20 year olds have completely different musical tastes and sometimes use slang I'm unfamiliar with. I deal with this by not delving too deeply into cultural details, brand names, that sort of thing. I've leave these as blank spaces for the reader to fill in.

 

[ScrappyPaperDoodler]

I've been reading stories here for nearly 20 years and writing since 2016. I'm middle-aged.

I can't recall ever receiving comments or feedback suggesting I'm not "keeping up" in my stories, and I haven't felt much if any concern about it.

I'm aware that even in the last 20 years there have been significant changes in the sexual landscape, especially concerning LGBTQ issues, but also regarding issues of consent. I also see a heightened level of Puritanism and disapproval that was absent previously. My perception is that the online erotica world was in someways more freewheeling 20 years ago, and it's become somewhat stricter, with some people settling into camps and be more vocal in disapproving of what others are reading. The attitude toward underage content is more negative than it used to be.

For the most part, though, I just write what I want to write, and readers seem OK to go along with that.

One way that it is difficult to "keep up" is popular culture and the speaking habits of young people. As I get older I'm increasingly aware that 20 year olds have completely different musical tastes and sometimes use slang I'm unfamiliar with. I deal with this by not delving too deeply into cultural details, brand names, that sort of thing. I've leave these as blank spaces for the reader to fill in.

I’ve definitely noticed a contradiction between what seems to be openness about sex and a 'new prudishness'. It’s hard to pin down and I can’t really point to a specific example. Maybe if I ever have a chance to go back to university, I’ll write that thesis.

I relate to the issue of how people speak/what pop culture is doing. Personally, I also try to steer clear of that.

 

[SimonDoom]

I’ve definitely noticed a contradiction between what seems to be openness about sex and a 'new prudishness'. It’s hard to pin down and I can’t really point to a specific example. Maybe if I ever have a chance to go back to university, I’ll write that thesis.

I relate to the issue of how people speak/what pop culture is doing. Personally, I also try to steer clear of that.

In your first post you raised an interesting question, to which I don't know the answer: how old are Literotica readers? I don't really know. My sense is that the authors skew on the older side, but I don't know about readers. I suspect there are a lot of older readers as well, so there's less expectation that erotica culture has to be completely current with contemporary popular culture.

I don't really know. My sense, too, is that it doesn't matter a lot because readers seem to be fairly receptive to the fantasy worlds I create, regardless of how current they are.

 

[NotWise]

I'm not at all up on current sexual attitudes, but I am something of a fan of antique porn. There's hardly anything you find in porn today that you can't find in Victorian and Edwardian porn. The more things change, the more they stay the same. The exceptions are surgical and medical interventions that didn't exist until relatively recently.

 

[8letters]

I only started writing/publishing a year ago, but I’ve been a longtime reader. All that reading has definitely influenced and since many of those stories were 'older', my work harkens back to a time when sexuality was very 'different.' Nowadays, it seems things have never been so open, yet there’s a new prudishness that contradicts it.

We’ve seen the advent of hyper-sexual social media, changes in how pornography is accessed and produced, massive changes in social relations, masculinity, femininity, gender, sexuality…

I struggle to harness many of these shifts in my writing. Still, I get the feeling that my readers (or at least those I interact with) are younger than I expected. I’d say a large portion are in their 20s and I often wonder what they like and how they perceive sex, considering their generation.

Many here have been writing for a long time and I wonder what you’ve noticed changing as the years pass. How do you try to keep up if you try at all?

I guess I'm on the other end. I try to "keep up", discussing issues that I think young people are facing. I did a story that prominently featured positive consent, and I got a lot of angry comments. "I don't care how hot the girl is, feminist propaganda deserves no place here."

So no matter what you write, somebody will complain.

 

[CyranoJ]

Many here have been writing for a long time and I wonder what you’ve noticed changing as the years pass. How do you try to keep up if you try at all?

The changes I've noticed in the erotica landscape are mostly either cosmetic or reflect the spread of previously unfamiliar kinks into new niches. Little of it seems to have much to do with openness or prudishness per se*.

(* I'd argue that there are new variants of both those things and that they're both more limited and more complicated than they might first appear, but that's a detailed argument that necessarily involves in-depth social and political analysis. Not sure that AH is really the place... or that the Lit forums are really the place. Might be good for a Medium article. It's worth talking about.)

As for the changes that have been most noticeable to me (stipulated, I hope obviously, that a lot of this is just speculation and impression on my part, not anything I can prove with facts and stats):

Porn has acquired a certain amount of mainstream cachet.
The idea of socialites becoming reality-show stars by using sex tapes that in previous eras would've been used against them as blackmail material would have gobsmacked people a quarter-century earlier, but there are adults today who've grown up with Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian as fixtures of normal celebrity, and big-ticket film and TV stars can make millions on OnlyFans in a day. Porn content producers can move back and forth from mainstream to kink and fetish content in the streaming era with greater ease than anything I've previously seen: Satine Phoenix and Sasha Grey are better known now as gaming streamers than as porn stars, and people who started as non-sexual novelty streamers can just as easily tack in the opposite direction, as with Belle Delphine.

The basic dynamics aren't necessarily "new." Marilyn Monroe became a sex symbol after Hugh Hefner published nudies of her without her consent; Bettie Page had evolved into an icon of mainstream burlesque and "alt fashion" by the Nineties; there have been previously mainstream media stars who drifted into porn [usually seen as a fall from grace]. It's in a whole different register now, though. And while sex tapes and "revenge porn" can still be used to shame people and fuck up their lives -- especially when they're not media stars or rich socialites -- and sex workers and porn stars are still seen differently, the most negative effects today come mainly from the dedicated swarms of trolls and stalkers that the modern Internet makes possible, not because mainstream society necessarily cares all that much outside of specific minority right-wing or other extremist political movements.

Previously extreme and fringe kinks like incest, BDSM and noncon fantasy have gone (more) mainstream.
Literotica itself is in part an illustration of these shifts. Incest/Taboo is arguably the big-ticket attraction of the site, or at least one of them (I don't know exactly how its numbers stack up against the Romance category); NC/R draws reasonably heavy traffic in its own right. BDSM is now a more mainstream practice, and now has a publicly active and vocal community that's trying to prise that practice away from the noncon fantasies that it once automatically coexisted with on the fringes of sexuality.

Meanwhile, both noncon and BDSM-flavored noncon fantasy have always been undercurrents in both mainstream and erotica content -- from The Story of O to Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty saga to "rape and revenge" grindhouse flicks and reluctance/mdom themes in too many books and movies to count -- but Fifty Shades of Grey becoming a blockbuster phenomenon read and watched openly by housewives was not something I could have imagined in the Eighties or Nineties.

Tattoos and body modification have largely stopped being worthy of comment, or have become the focus of their own kinks and fetishes.
As per the endless reams of "goth/emo/inked/punk/alt" porn on the Internet and the continued success of the Suicide Girls brand. And much to the consternation of what seems to be a specific subset of men of a certain age who grouse to each other about how tattoos and piercings are "spoiling" the feminine look of otherwise perfectly good women.

A lot of this coexists to a large degree with retro/vintage culture and smut. Any place where punk culture flourishes is also a place where rockabilly music and the Bettie Page aesthetic also flourish, to this day. This might seem surprising until you realize that "punk" itself became an effectively retro movement cannibalizing its own aesthetic more than thirty years ago, and that adjacent spaces like rudeboy/rudegirl subculture are still in the thrall of the Spirit of '69. (Meaning 1969, not the sexual position. At least not necessarily.)

Subgenres once specific to Japanese hentai have spread beyond it.
Futa/dickgirls are probably the most noticeable and durable example (although a casual reference to tentacle pr0n will also draw a knowing wink, by this time, from most people under fifty). This tracks with the adulthood of younger generations who grew up at least as familiar with anime and manga as with any kind of Western cinema. Futa originated as very-much-straight taboo fantasies about emasculation and pegging, and I feel like a lot of their current appeal is that aside from now being available to also spice up very-much-straight fantasies about lesbian sex, they can also be superficially passed off as a hip form of trans-visibility (which they absolutely aren't).

Some niches have grown more visible... although it's unlikely they've really grown in absolute market share.
Campaigns against fatphobia and body-shaming have led to full-figured fashion models becoming a thing, for instance; and in parallel, pr0n and erotica that was once confined to a "chubby chaser" niche (which itself reflects and dissents from pretty recent modern beauty standards) has gotten more visible, though I doubt the market for it has really grown. Likewise, "interracial" porn has become steadily more visible and accessible over my lifetime (another trend that generates backlash from certain sorts of demographics but that, like futa porn, doesn't necessarily in itself reflect anything very "progressive"). Gay porn generated by and for people who are themselves actually gay has also gotten a lot more visible.

Technology has unearthed or revealed seemingly "new" kinks that probably aren't that new.
The eroticism of having a partner whisper in your ear is, I expect, a phenomenon as old as reproduction, but I think it can be fairly said that only in the age of broadband Internet and headphones could ASMR become an actual erotic media niche. (There are those who protest that ASMR isn't necessarily sexual, a proposition to which for the most part I have to give quite a bit of side-eye.)

Those are the major examples I can think of right now.

 

[SimonDoom]

The changes I've noticed in the erotica landscape are mostly either cosmetic or reflect the spread of previously unfamiliar kinks into new niches. Little of it seems to have much to do with openness or prudishness per se*.

(* I'd argue that there are new variants of both those things and that they're both more limited and more complicated than they might first appear, but that's a detailed argument that necessarily involves in-depth social and political analysis. Not sure that AH is really the place... or that the Lit forums are really the place. Might be good for a Medium article. It's worth talking about.)

As for the changes that have been most noticeable to me (stipulated, I hope obviously, that a lot of this is just speculation and impression on my part, not anything I can prove with facts and stats):

Porn has acquired a certain amount of mainstream cachet.
The idea of socialites becoming reality-show stars by using sex tapes that in previous eras would've been used against them as blackmail material would have gobsmacked people a quarter-century earlier, but there are adults today who've grown up with Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian as fixtures of normal celebrity, and big-ticket film and TV stars can make millions on OnlyFans in a day. Porn content producers can move back and forth from mainstream to kink and fetish content in the streaming era with greater ease than anything I've previously seen: Satine Phoenix and Sasha Grey are better known now as gaming streamers than as porn stars, and people who started as non-sexual novelty streamers can just as easily tack in the opposite direction, as with Belle Delphine.

The basic dynamics aren't necessarily "new." Marilyn Monroe became a sex symbol after Hugh Hefner published nudies of her without her consent; Bettie Page had evolved into an icon of mainstream burlesque and "alt fashion" by the Nineties; there have been previously mainstream media stars who drifted into porn [usually seen as a fall from grace]. It's in a whole different register now, though. And while sex tapes and "revenge porn" can still be used to shame people and fuck up their lives -- especially when they're not media stars or rich socialites -- and sex workers and porn stars are still seen differently, the most negative effects today come mainly from the dedicated swarms of trolls and stalkers that the modern Internet makes possible, not because mainstream society necessarily cares all that much outside of specific minority right-wing or other extremist political movements.

Previously extreme and fringe kinks like incest, BDSM and noncon fantasy have gone (more) mainstream.
Literotica itself is in part an illustration of these shifts. Incest/Taboo is arguably the big-ticket attraction of the site, or at least one of them (I don't know exactly how its numbers stack up against the Romance category); NC/R draws reasonably heavy traffic in its own right. BDSM is now a more mainstream practice, and now has a publicly active and vocal community that's trying to prise that practice away from the noncon fantasies that it once automatically coexisted with on the fringes of sexuality.

Meanwhile, both noncon and BDSM-flavored noncon fantasy have always been undercurrents in both mainstream and erotica content -- from The Story of O to Anne Rice's Sleeping Beauty saga to "rape and revenge" grindhouse flicks and reluctance/mdom themes in too many books and movies to count -- but Fifty Shades of Grey becoming a blockbuster phenomenon read and watched openly by housewives was not something I could have imagined in the Eighties or Nineties.

Tattoos and body modification have largely stopped being worthy of comment, or have become the focus of their own kinks and fetishes.
As per the endless reams of "goth/emo/inked/punk/alt" porn on the Internet and the continued success of the Suicide Girls brand. And much to the consternation of what seems to be a specific subset of men of a certain age who grouse to each other about how tattoos and piercings are "spoiling" the feminine look of otherwise perfectly good women.

A lot of this coexists to a large degree with retro/vintage culture and smut. Any place where punk culture flourishes is also a place where rockabilly music and the Bettie Page aesthetic also flourish, to this day. This might seem surprising until you realize that "punk" itself became an effectively retro movement cannibalizing its own aesthetic more than thirty years ago, and that adjacent spaces like rudeboy/rudegirl subculture are still in the thrall of the Spirit of '69. (Meaning 1969, not the sexual position. At least not necessarily.)

Subgenres once specific to Japanese hentai have spread beyond it.
Futa/dickgirls are probably the most noticeable and durable example (although a casual reference to tentacle pr0n will also draw a knowing wink, by this time, from most people under fifty). This tracks with the adulthood of younger generations who grew up at least as familiar with anime and manga as with any kind of Western cinema. Futa originated as very-much-straight taboo fantasies about emasculation and pegging, and I feel like a lot of their current appeal is that aside from now being available to also spice up very-much-straight fantasies about lesbian sex, they can also be superficially passed off as a hip form of trans-visibility (which they absolutely aren't).

Some niches have grown more visible... although it's unlikely they've really grown in absolute market share.
Campaigns against fatphobia and body-shaming have led to full-figured fashion models becoming a thing, for instance; and in parallel, pr0n and erotica that was once confined to a "chubby chaser" niche (which itself reflects and dissents from pretty recent modern beauty standards) has gotten more visible, though I doubt the market for it has really grown. Likewise, "interracial" porn has become steadily more visible and accessible over my lifetime (another trend that generates backlash from certain sorts of demographics but that, like futa porn, doesn't necessarily in itself reflect anything very "progressive"). Gay porn generated by and for people who are themselves actually gay has also gotten a lot more visible.

Technology has unearthed or revealed seemingly "new" kinks that probably aren't that new.
The eroticism of having a partner whisper in your ear is, I expect, a phenomenon as old as reproduction, but I think it can be fairly said that only in the age of broadband Internet and headphones could ASMR become an actual erotic media niche. (There are those who protest that ASMR isn't necessarily sexual, a proposition to which for the most part I have to give quite a bit of side-eye.)

Those are the major examples I can think of right now.

This is good stuff. Good analysis.

I'd add this related point. I think the single biggest driver in change in the erotic world is the Internet, and it helps to at least somewhat keep up with technology to be able to describe how contemporary people experience erotica. The Internet obviously makes it much easier to access porn and erotica. But even more importantly, it makes it much easier to create. Look at all of us, after all. 40 years ago, I wouldn't be doing this. It's completely changing the porn industry, especially with the pandemic and OnlyFans. Porn actors have become their own producers. The model of young girls getting exploited by sleazeballs in the San Fernando Valley is evolving into a market where women and men make their own porn on their own terms in their own bedrooms, and they pocket the money on more favorable terms than before. The Internet also has created social communities organized along fetishes and kinks. Consider this Site, or something like Fetlife, or innumerable others.

For someone like me who's into exhibitionism and voyeur stories, technology creates great new dramatic possibilities. So it's useful to keep up with that.

 

[KeithD]

I'm sure there are changes, but I haven't looked for them or mulled them over. I don't worry much about what readers want to read (other than looking for undersubscribed niches I might profit from). Generally speaking, I write what I write and let readers find me--or not.

 

[AlinaX]

Or undersubscribed inches, for that matter...

ETA: Is anyone else tired of women magically able to breathe while swallowing 30" cocks? Bad enough when it was just misplaced hymens and fuckable wombs...

 

[gordo12]

In your first post you raised an interesting question, to which I don't know the answer: how old are Literotica readers? I don't really know. My sense is that the authors skew on the older side, but I don't know about readers. I suspect there are a lot of older readers as well, so there's less expectation that erotica culture has to be completely current with contemporary popular culture.

I don't really know. My sense, too, is that it doesn't matter a lot because readers seem to be fairly receptive to the fantasy worlds I create, regardless of how current they are.

I think if you look at the stats of readers accessing the site with phones Manu said it was something like 75-80% of the traffic. That to me in a younger trait. Older readers use desktops and tablets. I would guestimate the majority traffic is between 18-30 years of age. (Assuming readers respect the 18+ limit here )

As far as the OP's opening question, the only response I've ever had beyond the "how dare you let your wife do that" in LW is a story where I referred to a bunch of male dancers in a nightclub as "faggy, limp wristed pussyboys". THAT did not go over well. Surprisingly, the flack came from the women! That part I still don't understand.

Edumacation by the readers!

 

[CyranoJ]

This is good stuff. Good analysis.

Cheers.

I'd add this related point. I think the single biggest driver in change in the erotic world is the Internet, and it helps to at least somewhat keep up with technology to be able to describe how contemporary people experience erotica.

To this (and the whole subsequent paragraph): definitely agree.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Porn has acquired a certain amount of mainstream cachet.
The idea of socialites becoming reality-show stars by using sex tapes that in previous eras would've been used against them as blackmail material would have gobsmacked people a quarter-century earlier, but there are adults today who've grown up with Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian as fixtures of normal celebrity, and big-ticket film and TV stars can make millions on OnlyFans in a day. Porn content producers can move back and forth from mainstream to kink and fetish content in the streaming era with greater ease than anything I've previously seen: Satine Phoenix and Sasha Grey are better known now as gaming streamers than as porn stars, and people who started as non-sexual novelty streamers can just as easily tack in the opposite direction, as with Belle Delphine.

Yes, although things are still precarious for porn performers (as opposed to celebrity 'tourists' in porn-land). As sites like OF start to get that mainstream cachet they often start screwing over the sex workers who got them started, e.g. https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/onlyfans-sex-workers-porn-creators-999881/. (Not all the sites' fault; in some cases they're under a LOT of external pressure from the anti-s.)

Tattoos and body modification have largely stopped being worthy of comment, or have become the focus of their own kinks and fetishes.
As per the endless reams of "goth/emo/inked/punk/alt" porn on the Internet and the continued success of the Suicide Girls brand. And much to the consternation of what seems to be a specific subset of men of a certain age who grouse to each other about how tattoos and piercings are "spoiling" the feminine look of otherwise perfectly good women.

"but how will it look when you're olderrrrrrrrr"

"but it's not attractive to meeeeeee"

*sigh*

Poor dudes, slowly coming to terms (or not) with the fact that people aren't interested in what appeals to them.

 

[LAHomedog]

Agree with all.

Cultures change, erotica changes, and people's real sex lives change. For example, when I was a young man touching a woman's anus was a major no-no, and forget about inserting anything in it. Now its a common thing.

All one has to do is go to any major online porn site and look at what is treading. Now it is all adult mother/son, father/daughter incest. A few years back it was squirting women. Before that chicks with dicks. (Back then the joke in local newsrooms was all anyone wanted to see was "chicks with dicks, and nuns with guns." Now it's, "if it bleeds it leads.)

When I was in my 20s a best selling book came out titled "The Joys of Sex." It was a coffee table book, and featured the fact that is was okay, safe, hygienic, and normal for a guy to go down on a woman. When "Deep Throat" was released there were lines around the block for months to see it.

The pendulum will always swing back and forth because folks are always looking for the next turn-on.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I'm not at all up on current sexual attitudes, but I am something of a fan of antique porn. There's hardly anything you find in porn today that you can't find in Victorian and Edwardian porn. The more things change, the more they stay the same. The exceptions are surgical and medical interventions that didn't exist until relatively recently.

NotWise, my good fellow, you were reading the wrong papers!

https://www.vice.com/en/article/mvpy4b/fucking-hysterical-a-timeline-of-vintage-vibrators

 

[SimonDoom]

Poor dudes, slowly coming to terms (or not) with the fact that people aren't interested in what appeals to them.

Philosophically, I agree with this.

But it was a little hard for me when my daughter got a tattoo. Just saying.

 

[NotWise]

NotWise, my good fellow, you were reading the wrong papers!

https://www.vice.com/en/article/mvpy4b/fucking-hysterical-a-timeline-of-vintage-vibrators

I've seen ads for butt plugs that were probably older than the oldest vibrator.

 

[NotWise]

Philosophically, I agree with this.

But it was a little hard for me when my daughter got a tattoo. Just saying.

I had no problem when my oldest got a tattoo. She didn't have anything to lose by it, and it was a personal statement.

Models and dancers, on the other hand, are different. Every tattoo lowers their value. Photographers and artistic directors usually want to work with a blank canvas.

 

[LAHomedog]

Philosophically, I agree with this.

But it was a little hard for me when my daughter got a tattoo. Just saying.

Seems like a rite of passage with the younger generations. My son has one, his spouse has three and I know they were planning more prior to the pandemic.